From haunted houses to pop-up stores, Halloween is big business in southeastern Massachusetts

If it’s escapism you’re looking for this Halloween, you don’t have to go far. A seasonal retail store specializing in everything from basic trick-or-treat makeup to sophisticated, animatronic display objects is back in business for another year. Halloween pop-up s...

If it’s escapism you’re looking for this Halloween, you don’t have to go far.

A seasonal retail store specializing in everything from basic trick-or-treat makeup to sophisticated, animatronic display objects is back in business for another year.

Halloween pop-up stores are not an uncommon phenomenon. Spirit Halloween in Taunton Depot plaza on Route 140/County Street and in the Swansea Crossing on Swansea Mall Drive, for example, are part of a company with more than 1,000 locations in all 50 states, as well as Canada.

Spirit Halloween claims to be the largest Halloween speciality retailer in the country. It was acquired in 2009 by Spencer Gifts LLC, which for years has had a small retail store in Taunton’s Silver City Galleria mall.

“Halloween is not just for kids anymore,” said Lisa Barr, senior director of marketing for the New Jersey-based company.

Barr said an array of interactive displays in the store — including haunted mansion characters, a thrashing clown that shakes and laughs and zombie cats and gnome lawn ornaments — puts shoppers in the right frame of mind to buy.

She also said “sitting rooms” that afford children and adults a chance to try on costumes before buying are an integral part of the store’s philosophy.

“There’s nothing more frustrating than to take something home that doesn’t fit right,” Barr said.

Kathy Grannis, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation, said there’s been “tremendous growth” in recent years in the Halloween pop-up sector.

“There’s definitely a market for it. Halloween shouldn’t be taken so lightly,” she said.

At the same time, Grannis acknowledges that the state of the economy and the government shutdown are, to an extent, weighing on people’s minds.

A recent NRF survey indicates about 158 million consumers will buy Halloween-related products this year, a decrease from last year’s all-time high of 170 million.

Shoppers, NRF says, will spend an average of just more than $75 this year compared to $79.82 in 2012 for costumes, candy and other merchandise.

But she said Halloween spending since 2005 has increased 54.7 percent. Total spending by adults is expected to reach $6.9 billion this season.

“They pay their rent on time, and they’re really easy to work with,” Rando said.

The Galleria mall, for a second year in a row, is playing host to a haunted house attraction called Ghoulie Manor. The next closest so-called haunt is the long-established Factory of Terror in Fall River.

Ghoulie Manor is located in a rear section of the mall adjacent to Regal Cinemas. It is not accessible from the mall itself and instead has its own entrance.

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Proprietor Vic Bariteau said he’s willing to wait until a third year, if not to make a profit, then at least break even with paying customers.

“We’ve been in survival mode the first couple years, but it was part of our business plan from the start,” he said.

Bariteau, 45, said the threat of Superstorm Sandy last year in the week leading up to Halloween significantly hurt ticket sales.

“It was pretty devastating,” he said.

Bariteau said he’s on course to easily surpass the 2,500 customers who visited the haunt in 2012, when he netted just $30,000 after expenses.

Haunted houses are also a popular draw in Fall River.

“What we try to do is keep them screaming,” Tony Luizinho said. “We are trying to bring back the boogeyman.”

Luizinho and his wife, Sue Luizinho, own the Factory of Terror, the haunted house at 33 Pearl St. They have run the attraction during the scream season — September and October — since 1996. They have 30 actors, 15 support people and several hundred people a night who buy a ticket and step into a maze of smoke-filled, darkened, narrow corridors to face their fears.

“We have a great draw,” Luizinho said. “We have families and kids on dates. Last year, Rob Gronkowski from the Patriots came through with cheerleaders.

“We try to get in everyone’s head.”

The draw isn’t limited to locals.

“We get people from all over,” Tony Luizinho said. “People come down to Fall River from New Hampshire for our show. We get people from the Boston area, Rhode Island, Connecticut.

“Some people really like to get scared.”

Mixing it up

At the Factory of Terror, the senses of sight, sound and touch get muddled immediately so that the ordinary becomes strange. Then the fun starts.

A maze of dark, narrow corridors turns unexpectedly, so you can’t prepare for the walls made of skulls, the moans and shrieks, the blasts of air or light that further confuse you, or the cobwebs in your face or a laughing man with a chain saw popping out of a closet.

In one room the floor feels like it is swaying. In another the walls close in. They work with animatronics companies from Orlando, Fla., every year to keep up with what is new, Luizinho said.

“We work out new ideas every year,” Luizinho said. “I have a little trouble with claustrophobia, so I always try to work that in. I talk about it with Sue and Jeff Silvia, our manager. We try to match our imagination.”

Like the Luizinhos, Bariteau is also convinced that he and his staff have assembled a first-rate, haunt experience.

Bariteau prides himself on the fact that he uses his own hands to create most of the props, which includes everything from skull-embossed walls and demons to shattered skulls and severed limbs.

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Unlike some haunts that offer little more than a single, twisted dark tunnel with stock characters in rubber masks and black clothing, Bariteau said he’s put a lot of thought into creating his legend of Ghoulie (or Goulet) Manor.

He’s increased the number of rooms within the site this year from 22 to 30. He also says 70 percent of those macabre, interconnected rooms have been altered so repeat customers don’t feel as though nothing’s changed. Admission is still $15.

“We’ve put our heart and soul into this,” he said of himself, his family and a coterie of friends who take delight in being part of the operation.

Bariteau said he’s managed to retain more than 80 percent of his current staff of 30. New staff, he said, must first pass a casting call audition.

“It’s very theatrical. You have to be dedicated,” he said.

Before opening Ghoulie Manor in 2012, Bariteau for nearly 20 years was honing his craft each year by converting his Fairhaven house into a free haunt for Halloween trick-or-treaters.

He’d previously worked as an IT systems engineer for State Street Bank and Trust Company but was a victim in 2010 of massive layoffs at the Quincy company.

Last year he remortgaged his house to kick-start his venture, making an initial investment of $90,000. Bariteau says he’s spent another $50,000 making improvements and changes in 2013.

And although his season at the mall lasts less than six weeks, he’s been renting the 15,000-square-foot space on a year-round basis. Bariteau said he’s been very fortunate that mall management has been “overly generous” in rent rates.

“I hope we’ll get the same deal again,” he said, referring to the fact that the Galleria was sold last summer to a Dallas-based company.

Bariteau said operating a haunt in a mall is both a “blessing and a curse.”

He notes the advantages of good security and ample parking, but he’s also had to battle a stereotype that any such attraction in a mall is more likely to be “a low-quality haunt.”

For the memories

Along with profits, the efforts of haunted house operators such as Bariteau and the Luizinhos are paid off in the reactions from their customers.

One family walked into the maze at the Factory of Terror, a mother and two preteen daughters who were strutting with bravado. Five seconds into the first room — after their surprise meeting with a man covered in blood — the two girls were on either side of their mother, their arms wrapped around her in a hug they probably haven’t offered since they were 9 months old.

They walked into the second room like a being with three heads.

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“If people get scared, we can get them out,” Silvia said. “We encourage people to talk to us if they are concerned about their kids. We’ll keep an eye on them.

“Of course, a few times the kids have been OK, but we had to get the adults out. That happens, too.”

But not to the crew from New Bedford: Isaiah Hernandez, 14, Jonathan Morris-Conterno, 11, Richard Hernandez, 12, and Jayton Dias, 13.

“It was awesome,” Isaiah Hernandez said. “And in the end, the walls were closing in and a guy came out. That was the best.”

So would they do it again? Hernandez looked at his friends. They all laughed, but they were too polite to point out what a dumb question that was.

“Yeah,” Hernandez said. “We’d do it again.”

Scream on screen

As much as a trip to a haunted house can put a scare into visitors, they can also find themselves trembling in fear sitting on their couch at home.

Bariteau said it’s a documentary movie that could put him over the top in terms of longevity and profit.

Bariteau, along with two other Fairhaven families who still do private house haunts, were the subject of a film released in 2012 called “The American Scream.” Since first being screened in Austin, he says it’s not only been broadcast on the Chiller TV channel, it’s gotten rave reviews in Europe, Australia and even China.

“The American Scream,” he said, made it onto the late Roger Ebert’s final “must-watch documentary list” and was No. 1 for a few weeks on Netflix.

Now, he said, customers are coming in asking him to sign their DVD copies.

“It’s probably what’s keeping us going this year,” Bariteau said of the film’s growing popularity.

Ghoulie Manor is open through Oct. 30, the night before All Hallows’ Eve. Bariteau says it would be unfair to deprive employees the pleasure of trick or treating with their kids or attending a Halloween party.